The Sorry-go-Round
WE HAVE been in a political sorry-go-round since the Quaid 's death. When I say "we," I mean we the people. The feudals have never had it so good. For them and for those in business (and later in industry), it has been a perpetual merry-go-round.
The word ' feud' has two meanings. It means, " Lasting mutual hostility, especially between two tribes or families, with murderous assaults in revenge for previous injury ." ' Feud' also means " a fief, feudal benefice, territory held in fee ." And ' feudalism' means the " Mediaeval European polity based on relation of superior and vassal arising from holding of lands in fend; a system by which land was held of a superior (in England ultimately of the King ) in return for services which included military service, homage, etc ." ( The Reader's Digest Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary ).
Now, the British occupied the Punjab and Sindh in the middle of the 19th century and the Raj ended a few years short of the 20th. In all these 100 years of slavery, and 50 more of independence, the families created by the Sahibs have been in perpetual political, economic, and sometimes even spiritual control, and denied the middle classes their due share of the national cake.
Too much has been written on these feudal-and often feuding-families for me to go into details all over again. Suffice it to say that when the feudals enter into alliances, the people suffer and when they begin feuding, it is the people who suffer; it has always been Zan , Zar , Zamin with them. I won't name names. You all know who's who in this gallery of you know which manor.
One thing, which amazes me, is that every adult male or female knows the evils of feudalism. Yet every time the people are asked to vote, they elect the oppressors who have held them down for generations untold. There are feudal families who were in power during the Raj . They are still in power. So it is we the people who are to blame for our miseries. If Shah Mahmood Qureshi is in the Muslim League, we vote for him. If the Shah joins the PPP , we vote for him. If Arbab Jahangir is in the PPP, he is returned. If he joins the ANP , we vote him in. I have given you but two examples. There are hundreds of such instances.
Even when a non-feudal like Mian Nawaz Sharif accedes to power, he has to depend on feudal support, especially in Southern Punjab and Sindh . In erstwhile East Pakistan , there were no big landlords, and therefore, a middle class leadership emerged there in the very first decade of independence. The Muslim League, which had become the handmaiden of the feudals even before partition, was routed there in the famous 1954 elections. A similar situation has emerged in parts of the Punjab in areas where there are no big land holdings and it has become possible for men like Sheikh Rashid of Rawalpindi to win every election they contest. But the Sardars of Balochistan , the Khans of the NWFP , and the Pirs and Waderas of Southern Punjab, and rural Sindh are still a formidable force. These people preferred military rule to sharing power with the middle class leaders of East Pakistan. In Karachi and other urban pockets of Sindh, the MQM emerged as a party with a middle class leadership and a middle class, largely literate, following. Therefore, attempts were, and are being made by the feudal-bureaucratic combination to eliminate it by force. It is a contagion. It must not be allowed to spread. It must not be allowed to give foolish ideas to other people in other parts of the country.
Accountability? Someone must be joking. Even if a few heads roll during the next few weeks, do you think moral and material wrongdoing can be eliminated? In a system bed rocked on corruption, it is simply not possible. Mission impossible. Period. We vote the corrupt into power because we are ourselves corrupt-because we are always looking for advantages. Our thinking is: if 'A' is returned, we'll get such and such benefits. We are not concerned whether he is rotten to the core. So we get the candidate we deserve.
I quote here from an old comment made by The Times , London :
" Rao is beset with internal party problems and is perceived to be willing to sweep away corruption. A danger has now arisen that Mr. Rao will dilute the government 's commitment to fiscal discipline in an attempt to placate dissidents within his party as well as to win support from the electorate. "
Just as I said, we will not allow an honest administration to work here and if anyone in power decides to take the narrow path of moral and material rectitude, we'll throw him/her out.
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Mrs. Bhutto has accused President Leghari of ingratitude. But ingratitude, dear lady, is the name of the game in Pakistan , and each generation will play the same. What did President Ayub do to Gen . Iskander Mirza ? What did Zulfikar Ali Bhutto do to Ayub Khan , the man he used to call ' daddy?' What did Gen Zia-ul-Haq do to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto ? So this happens all the time. No need to crib.
Then she says that her grandfather, Sir Shahnawaz , did a lot to secure the separation of Sindh from Bombay , and thus made Pakistan possible. I am glad she has not claimed that Sir Shahnawaz was the founder of the country, and not the Quaid . According to what I have heard, the most prominent people among those who got Sindh provincial status were Sheikh Abdul Majid, K. B. Khuhro, Ali Mohammad, Miran Muhammad Shah, and Jethmal Parasram.
Sindh became a separate province on April 1, 1936. Mr. G. M. Syed held a meeting in his Karachi house to decide what sort of political party the Muslim of Sindh should form. Sir Ghulam Husain and Sir Shahnawaz were invited, but they did not attend the meeting. In the elections that followed in 1937, Sir Shahnawaz, then the leader of the Sindh United Party, lost to, I believe, Abdul Majid Sindhi. He might have played a role in the separation struggle, but he moved to Junagardh soon after his defeat and became prime minister of that princely state in 1938 or thereabouts, and thus distanced himself from mainstream Sindhi politics.
Friday, December 13, 1996
